RB Piano Forte Chronicles

TWO WEEKS OF LOLLING around in the sun and warm turquoise-blue water down in the Caribbean.

Nice for the soul, not so good for piano practice. While there, I did try some fingering exercises on the tabletop at a beachfront restaurant – tapping out patterns with my fingernails. Marginally useful – you really need the keys to reference.

Not much good for blogging, either. I tried to put together the playlist page, but ran into a glitch and was immediately overwhelmed by warm air and water. So, I have to sandwich that exercise in between other activities, again.

The famous Horowitz quote about skipping practices goes: “If I miss one day, I can tell – if I miss two days, the conductor can tell – if I miss three days, the audience can tell.”

I’m nowhere near that level of expertise, so two weeks isn’t a big deal. In fact, it may have been an improvement, to a certain degree (the neighbors might think, anyway), since I rested a lot of muscles that were getting pretty sore.

So, on my return, I sat down and ran through the playlist. Stiff at first (what is this thing in front of me?) but, after a couple of runs of an Invention or two, the familiarity returned and things felt like they should. More importantly, I don’t seem to have forgotten much except a bit of fingering in the Chopin (a new piece.)

I do wonder if I’ll ever get to the point where I’ll know it if I miss a day?